Ethics in industrial product design - (Good, goods and gods)

Abstract

The lack of ethical side and its possible reasons in our professional designer lives is the main theme of this presentation. For the basic principle is good for ethical existence, we usually avoid asking ethical questions in our professional design activities. We prefer principles of professionalism or codes of conduct. Though the whole design culture of past, present and future have been and will be abstractions of human mind, yet we find ethics too abstract for design practice. We seem to prefer designing for the sake of design’s own sake and never asking ethical questions like “is it good?” Of course there comes a time for all of us to ask ethical questions and it usually happens when the going gets tough. When somebody reproduces a sheep genetically, when a couple of designer-scientists get close to apply human DNA into computer processors, when we start watching planes crashing into towers just like a movie or a war just like a computer software, or when we see our children getting more violent in front of actual or fictional terror in our designed environment, then we start asking ethical questions as it is nowadays.